A note on extremal mappings of finite distortion (Q2388311)

Let \(\Omega\) be a subdomain of \(\mathbb{R}^2\). A mapping \(f:\Omega\rightarrow\mathbb{R}^2\) is said to be of finite distortion if (i) \(f\in W^{1,1}_{\text{loc}}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^2)\); (ii) the Jacobian determinant \(J(x,f)\) of \(f\) is locally integrable; and (iii) there exists a measurable function \(K=K(x)\), finite almost everywhere, such that \[ | Df(x)| ^2\leq K(x)J(x,f) \quad \text{ a.e.} \;x\in\Omega \, . \tag{1} \] Here \(| Df(x)| \) stands for the operator norm \(\sup\{| Df(x)h| : | h| =1\}\). The smallest function \(K(x)\) for which (1) holds is called the outer distortion function of \(f\), which can be defined as \(| Df(x)| ^2/J(x,f)\) when \(J(x,f)>0\), and 1 otherwise. The operator norm has the disadvantage of being insufficietly regular to deal with variational equations. The authors therefore introduce a modified outer distortion function \(\mathbb{K}(x,f)\), as being equal to \(\|Df(x)\| ^2/J(x,f)\) when \(J(x,f)>0\), and 1 otherwise, where \(| | A| | =\frac12\text{ Tr}(A^{T}A)\) is the mean Hilbert-Schmidt norm. Consider now the class \(\mathcal{F}=\mathcal{F}(\Omega,\Omega^{\prime})\) of \(W^{1,1}_{\text{loc}}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^2)\)-regular homeomorphisms \(f:\overline\Omega \rightarrow \overline{\Omega^{\prime}}\) of finite distortion for which \(\mathbb{K}(x,f)\) is integrable in \(\Omega\). In this paper the authors establish the following main result: Theorem: Let \(\Omega\) be a convex planar domain and \(f_0\in\mathcal{F}\). Then the minimization problem \[ \min_{f\in\mathcal{F}}\int_{\Omega}\mathbb{K}(x,f)\,dx, \quad f=f_0 \text{ on }\partial\Omega \] has a unique solution. The extremal map is a \(\mathcal{C}^{\infty}\)-diffeomorphism whose inverse is harmonic in \(\Omega '\). \textit{K. Astala, T. Iwaniec, G. J. Martin}, and \textit{J. Onninen} established the above result for the smaller class \(\mathcal{F}\cap W^{1,2}_{\text{loc}}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^2)\) in ``Extremal mappings of finite distortion'', Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (to appear).